National Trust Orchid House

After many months of redevelopment the National Trust have opened the Orchid House. The building on the Pennine Way behind the Field Centre buildings has undergone extensive structural and decorating work. The Orchid House was officially opened on Thursday June 9th. The facility is to be used as a classroom and event room by the National Trust. However the building now offers toilet facilities for people walking the Pennine Way and Information Boards for the area. Previously the nearest toilets to the Tarn were in Malham Village. This will now be very welcome for the thousands of people who walk along this path every year.

June so far...

With many A level and GCSE students studying for their exams we have been busy with younger groups and University groups. Staff from the centre have taught two Open University groups as part of their Environmental Science in the Field course. Leeds and Aberdeen have also run self taught residential visits to the centre. The students undertook many different interesting projects when they were here involving catching and releasing small mammals, catching and tagging birds and bat surveys.

Heatherton House, Westholme Middle School, Priestly College, Lomond School, Queen Anne's School, Cheadle and Marple College and Cardinal Langley High School have all visited centre.

May and June have been fairly wet months, probably to make up for the near drought conditions of April. Fishing is still going well with many fishermen being sucessful.


The centre is constantly updating fixtures and fittings and we have recently made the staff common room a bit more comfortable. If you are visiting soon, we hope you enjoy it!

May

After the Easter Break centre has been  very busy again with many groups over May. With exams taking place in schools we have had many visits day and residential from Key Stage 1 and 2 groups. Moorlands, Lady Lane Park, Settle Primary, Giggleswick Primary, St Nicholas,  were involved in sessions like rivers, rocks, soils and pond dipping. Whilst St Mary's School from Colchester completed their Discovery Award for their John Muir Award course and returned to school eager to set up and find Geocaches around their home area. They also presented back to the school and their parents everything they learned from exploring the Malhamdale area.

Other groups to visit have been John Lyon's School, Cokethorpe, Hull Collegiate and Archbishop Sentamu studying geography as part of their Year 9 and 10 studies.

Malham Tarn in JLS film

If you read our post from April you may remember JLS shot a short film sequence at Malham Tarn at the end of March. The footage that they shot was used in their film 'Eyes Wide Open.' Their film was in cinemas UK wide for just one day on the 3rd June. Did you manage to see Malham Tarn, when the group played football at the side of the lake?